The Snake-who-lived
Book 3: Prisoner of Azkaban
Chapter 2: The scar
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Birds.
There are quite a few annoying things about birds.
First, they fly. Since the birth of civilization, man has tried to copy the feat and has only managed it in the last century. And while we were attempting to fly – usually with very amusing-looking contraptions – they just looked down, making merry loops in the air and twittering down musical laughs as those ten-winged 'planes' crashed spectacularly from a daring altitude of a foot and a half.
Second, well, like every other living being, they need to… evacuate. Exactly how much tax money goes into cleaning those toilet-statues every year? Granted, they are usually of old politicians who are quite used of having sh… being spread on their names, but still…
And third… the most irritating thing about birds…
***COO-COO!!***
"Hmmhhrrgghh…" Harry groaned as a cheerful cuckoo announced the new morning for all to hear all over the campground. Unfortunately, the branch it decided to do so on just happened to be just over his and Blaise's tent.
"Five more minutes…" The girl protested, trying to pull the sleeping bag over her head, quite unsuccessfully since her own weight held the bottom part down under her, stopping it from being pulled any higher.
***COO-COO!!***
Verbally cursing the damned bird and wishing he could do it literally – the world would probably benefit from a muted cuckoo bird – Harry unzipped his sleeping bag and took it off, then slid out of his 'bed' carefully as to not wake Blaise more than the bird had already done while smoothing his ruffled pajamas.
"Morning." Blaise's voice told him how futile his silence had been. The girl was sitting up and trying to rub the sleep out of her eyes, her hair a mess, but not as bad as it normally was, proof of the previous night's full moon.
***COO-CO--***
"Ah, Shurrap!!"
***THOK!*** ***KWAAAK!!***
The sound of a rock hitting a tree, of the bird flying away and the following colorful expletives told them quite a few things; Mrs. Zabini was also awake, she was not happy, she had thrown a rock and the guilty party had unfortunately escaped unharmed. Harry and Blaise shared an amused look as the girl's mother described the bird's ancestry. Strange, it hadn't sounded like an odd cross between a pot-headed Augrey and a feathered female dog of questionable intellect.
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It was a typical morning, at least as typical as the Zabinis on a camping ground were. Mr. Zabini was digging into their supplies, getting the toasts, jams and butter they had packed before leaving. As for Mrs. Zabini, she was trying to start the fire. However, it seemed nobody had told her that blowing on the embers was more helpful than threatening them.
Looking up, Harry saw that there wasn't a single cloud anywhere in the sky. The sun, barely peeking above the trees surrounding their lot, was already spreading heat that promised to become more intense as the day went on. As soon as she noticed this, Blaise's lips turned upwards into a victorious grin.
"Does that mean we're going to swim?" She asked her mother, who seemed to be satisfied of the weak wisps of smoke escaping from the pile of paper and bark set underneath a pyramid of logs.
Mrs. Zabini gave a look at the sky before nodding. "If it stays like that, yes," she replied, just as she noticed the smoke had gone out. "Argh!! Harry, come over here, please..."
Few minutes later, with Harry's help, Mrs. Zabini had started a decent fire. By Harry's help, I mean that he got in the neighbors field of vision so she could cast a drying charm on the logs and set them on fire magically.
"And once more, magic triumphs over nature." The woman said with a grin while her husband heated their breakfast. With a mocking grin, she bent down look at the flames from a foot away. "How do you feel about that, little logs? Oh, right, you're burning in anger about it, right?"
Harry resisted an urge to sigh. Blaise didn't.
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After breakfast, Mrs. Zabini and Blaise both ducked in the biggest tent of the two to put on their swimsuits. Harry and Mr. Zabini quickly did the same in the other one. True to form, they were finished long before the former two finally exited their tents. Blaise's body was mostly hidden by a long shirt with an oversized neckhole, and the normally elbow-length sleeves went all the way down to her wrists.
Mrs. Zabini came out with a similar shirt, although it fit her much more snugly than it did Blaise. The bottom piece of her own red bikini was plainly visible and the neck hole revealed only a small and prudish triangle of skin in front of her neck. After picking up some pre-planned backpacks and stuffing the towels and necessary items in them, they left for the beach.
"Did you two have to take my shirts?" Mr. Zabini wondered. His question remained unanswered.
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Harry had never been to the beach before. He had seen pictures, heard – horror – stories about it from the Dursleys, seen it in TV shows, but never in person. And now, he was staring at it. The real thing.
And he couldn't believe his eyes.
'And here I thought the lake was big…'
The sea was an endless, constantly moving mass of pure blue water. It stretched across the horizon with a perfectly flat line, managing to look both dull and wonderful at the same time. Between them and it was the beach; another sea, but this time of sand, stretching far on every side and stopped by rocky outcroppings and picket-fence barriers. Wave after wave of water crashed against the sandy bank, filling the air with a soothing rhythmic sound. High overhead, a flock of seagulls was singing and flying, sometimes diving down on the sand to search through an unsuspecting picnic box that an unfortunate someone had made the mistake of abandoning there.
It was bursting with activity; close to them, a woman was laying face down on a towel, tanning her back. A group of children were building a sandcastle while a little girl in a neon green one-piece whined loudly about a shovel. An ice cream seller was trying to satisfy a sizable crowd of youngsters, although he looked like he wished he could sample a piece of his merchandise instead of selling it away.
Standing beside Harry, the two adults just nodded at the sight and scanned the beach with their eyes to find a spot to lay down their things. They seemed to choose the same one on a wordless common accord and began to walk there. And as for Blaise…
He found the shirt she had been wearing draped over his head a second later, then felt a rough shove as a backpack rammed into his stomach and fell to the ground before hearing his friend's voice yell out, "Last one in the water is a dirty troll!!"
"H-HEY!" Harry protested, struggling against his cotton confines, finally pulling them off the glare at the girl. "No fair!"
The Slytherin girl pulled her tongue at him over her shoulder and let out a loud raspberry that somehow managed to be heard all the way to him.
Sighing at her antics, Harry picked up the fallen backpack and carried both it and his own over to where Mr. and Mrs. Zabini had chosen to set down, a nice, flat and sunny spot near the lifeguard's chair. As he came closer, he could hear the woman's voice protesting at something her husband had said.
"Don't worry, our things will be safe there," She was saying, "you're going swimming even if I have to drag you across the beach and throw you in the water, Dario."
The man sighed in defeat, though his smile did not vanish. "Fine."
Mrs. Zabini's grin turned impish. "Perfect." One of her arms disappeared in the sleeve of her shirt a second before she pulled it away.
Her swimsuit was not, as he had thought, a bikini. If it could be called anything, it would be 'a bunch of strings holding some cloth at the important spots'. Her curvy, slim body was revealed nearly completely and, Harry thought while blushing furiously, she would have turned less heads had she not been wearing it.
Running a hand through her mid-back dark red hair, Mrs. Zabini smirked impishly and purred naughtily, "Watch out, boys, Elmira's in town." After seeing her husband's cross look, she quickly added, "and unfortunately for you, she's strictly non-touch material."
"Uh?" Harry blinked and stared.
"Isn't it a bit… er…" Mr. Zabini protested weakly, pointing at the tied up string holding the bottom piece in place. "What if it snaps?"
"Don't you worry," She replied, purposefully bending down toward her husband and revealing her ample cleavage, "I've cast a you-know-what on it. It's not going to snap."
"B…But…"
"Well, let's go! Blaise is waiting," Mrs. Zabini cut into her husband's weak protests, grinning and pointing at where her daughter was waving wildly in the water, calling after them.
As the woman walked bare-foot on the sandy beach toward the sea, swaying her hips provocatively while looking over her shoulders at Mr. Zabini, Harry looked at her. He knew he had seen it… It hadn't been his imagination...
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…There was a large, jagged scar, as thick as his hand, running over her left flank, from the front to her back.
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As hard as Blaise tried, Harry did not manage to learn how to do anything in the water but sink like a stone, nor did he feel compelled to get out of the relatively warm shallow water and further out into the sea. His mind just wasn't into it enough and, after she gave up, he returned to the towels to think.
Harry had spent more than his fair share of time in the infirmary. He knew perfectly what kind of miracles Poppy Pomfrey, the school's nurse, was capable of doing. He had wound up with a rib through his lungs the previous year, when a rigged Bludger had rammed into him during a Quidditch match – and he still didn't know what had happened, although he had a faintly good idea it had something to do with a certain House elf (that had tried to get him run over by the carriages on the first school day). Yet, the next morning, he had been fit enough to stand and walk on his own.
Except for the one on his forehead – which was hardly a usual one – Harry had never seen a witch of wizard with a scar. His pet theory was that it was only because of its peculiar nature that he still had it.
Mrs. Zabini, he knew, was pure-blooded, therefore, she would have always had access to a mediwizard, all her life. He also knew she had been an Auror in the past, but was now unemployed. Was this the reason? Had she stopped because she had been injured?
Perhaps it was, but he knew she was far from harmless from the way she had handled the Dursleys two years ago and Lockhart, just one month earlier. So then, why wasn't she working? Maybe Blaise had been right; she had stopped to take care of her daughter. Maybe she actually worked while they were away, at Hogwarts.
And there was still the question of just what had made it. From its shape, it looked like something had run through her side and opened her up. He didn't doubt for a second that a Muggle would have died on the spot. Probably the only reason why she would still be alive would be because someone had healed her quickly.
But then, why would there still be a scar?
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When the sun was about to set and a cool wind settled over the beach, Mrs. Zabini called after Blaise to get out of the water. After being forcefully extracted by her mother, the shivering girl was wrapped in Harry's warm body-heated and relatively dry towel and forced to slip on her sandals; she apparently wanted to get back in.
"Come on, mum! The water was warmer!" She protested through the clattering of her teeth while hugging the towel tighter. "You usually let me swim late when we're at auntie Esmeralda's!"
"First, you're used to swimming in the Mediterranean sea. That's a lot warmer than this. Plus, she coupled a heating ward with in the water with a permanent cleaning charm."
"B-B…But…" Seeing that, no matter how hard she tried, her own body was betraying her on how cold she felt, she wisely decided to shut up.
"Second, Esmeralda's house is a few dozen feet away from the shore, so you can get warm faster. Now stop complaining."
She had regressed to a small intermittent shudder by the time they reached their campground. Mr. Zabini was quick to start a fire, around which they heated themselves and roasted marshmallows until Blaise's head started to tilt on Harry's shoulder, while Mrs. Zabini downright fell asleep on her husband's side. Soon after, they retired for the night, and Harry hadn't dared ask anything.
The enormous jagged scar on his friend's mother's flank remained a mystery that kept him awake and staring up at the top of his tent for hours, that night.
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Author's notes:
If anyone wants to know, yes, I've already seen the ocean. And I've swum in it. And I've had the absolutely horrible idea to open my bare eyes while I was diving in salt water. Here's a tip to everyone, just don't. It hurts. And try not to rub your eyes with your drenched hands after if you do. That's worse. I speak from experience here T_T
I would have put a Detective Conan cameo in the beach scene, but there was the small problem that this isn't Japan. *sob*. Plus, the series happen some time after the year 2000 (Volume 30, file 8). Practically the only Anime characters that CAN show up are Seras Victoria (Who'd probably still be a babyish girl, considering this is 1993 and Hellsing has a well-developed Internet) and Ryoga Hibiki (though probably not by choice, in his case).
Short, WAY too short, I hate writing so short, but there was no way to cut anything out of the next chapter and no way to add to this one without giving stuff away. Sorry! And nearly one month of wait, too… I'll try to be as quick as I can with chapter 4.
é_è don't kill me!
ANSWERS TO THE EERILY LAUGHING EVIL NEON-PINK BEACH BALLS OF THE REVIEWERS
VMorticia: It was fun to do. Well, see... the thing is, most people... most normal people, that is, excluding Demon lords and crazy Voldemort-loving fanfic writers, don't like evil. I know, they are strange...
Serpent of Light: There's a good reason for it, actually... but I'm not too sure of how I'll twist it into the story :P. Probably going to have to write a mini-fic about Dario and Elmira Zabini's first meeting... As for the couples... well, once again, I have no idea what they'll be. There will be some romantic comedy elements in this book, though.
Athenakitty: *twitch*
RaistlinofMetallica: Happy belated birthday! Chibified Mrs. Zabini... O_o
Writing is Fun: You got my E-mail.
Jeangab057: I like her too ^_-
Lunawolf: You're not the only one, don't worry :P. Your dad? Boy, I wish mine was like that then :P
LSFawkles: Weee~eell, maybe ^_-. Mrs. Weasley strikes me as a bit of a mother hen at times, and I don't doubt for a second she'd be even more protective of Ginny, since she's her only daughter. But they're a bit young for that. As for Quidditch... that's a secret.
Hitmanhand: Oh, no problem. How's this chapter for crazy? And she's not 'crazy', per se. Just extremely immature for a grown woman.
Aberforth Dumbledore: I have no idea what the couples will be.
The Vampire Story Hunter: *looks at the update date* ...oops?
Hades: I'm not even going to consider it.
PhoenixMan: thanks!
Flummox: Because the gods are naughty kids who enjoy making us suffer, that's why the butter always falls on the wrong side. Congratulations, I now declare you as crazy as... well, you've never met my cousin, but you two would be able to compete. It's not Tonks, but you're right, it does sound like her, doesn't it? I'm not too sure, I got a twist that might happen, and if it works, then… well, things will be different. Can't say anything else or else I'll break the plot, but…
Dragonsprincess who might just get stabbed with a knife called 'Jealousy': *Mouth frothing* Me? Jealous? Of course not… *glaring daggers, broadswords, spears, chainsaws and toothpicks* Oooh, nice Katana… *practices swinging it* Hmm… *looks at you* *glares more toothpicks* *aims…*
Tonnocal: *BZZTTT!!* Wrong! Now… I'll tell you… that it's a secret. ^_-
Stevethecool: I really had no idea myself, so… :P
Jean-Hime: You'll be happy with this book then, tons of stuff revealed about her… it's her book, if you will. Well, along with Remus'… and Sirius'… and Snape's… and --*mouth blocked*'s…
Krissy Riddle: Thanks!
Blackheart Syaoran: ^_-
Ranchan17: No idea 'bout the couples, don't ask :P. That was just Mrs. Zabini playing around.
Watcher Tale Neith: hehe
Simply Myself: I'm concentrating on characterization for now, deepening the Zabinis a bit while I can. Can't wait to be at Hogwarts, though.
MikaChan5: *thanking V-chan* And I don't know 'bout the couples.
Earthtgoddess: I replied to you.
SSSRoaB: *blush* er… thanks… ^.^